


after midnight

by orphan_account



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: spoilers for 2.06/chapter 14, unlikely partners who grow to actually like each other...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:14:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27881325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Fennec immediately knows something is off when she wakes up.First of all, she’salive.That’s not supposed to happen.(Fennec Shand finds herself indebted to Boba Fett. It's all rather inconvenient.)
Relationships: Fennec Shand & Boba Fett
Comments: 15
Kudos: 166





	after midnight

**Author's Note:**

> Fennec Shand is ALIVE and SO AM I

The blaster bolt tears through her stomach like hot iron. Fennec falls to her knees with a gasp, immobilized by pain. The idiotic little shit who somehow had the presence of mind to shoot her is saying something as she slumps over but she can’t make his words out, all her senses blurring until they dull into nothing. In what could very well be her last moments the only thing Fennec wants is to say something snarky to him, like _you couldn’t even get close to me without a babysitter,_ or even just to spit at his feet, but she can’t hope to summon the strength. Her body feels like it’s tearing itself apart.

Her face hits the sand and she’s gone, pulled into inky blackness.

Fennec immediately knows something is off when she wakes up.

First of all, she’s _alive._ That’s not supposed to happen. People don’t survive being shot in the gut at point blank range and left to rot in the Dune Sea. Second, and perhaps even more alarmingly, there’s something in her that shouldn’t be there. Anyone else might not notice so quickly, but Fennec is a sharpshooter. She knows her body, knows how to keep it still, knows all the minutiae of how it moves – and she definitely knows when there are metal parts in her stomach.

There’s someone to her left. She can feel it. Fennec forces her eyes open to see the ceiling of a tent. There’s some sort of machine whirring quietly nearby. Right on time, the person speaks.

“You’re finally awake.”

“What the hell have you done to me,” says Fennec.

“Saved your life,” the person says gruffly, without missing a beat.

Fennec manages to wrench her head to the left. Her apparent savior is a large man with a scarred and inscrutable face. He’s sitting there and looking down at her, his expression not unkind, but not quite welcoming, either. She thinks for a moment that he might be a holdover from a crime syndicate that she once worked for, and that the New Republic has since dismantled. But, no, there’s something different about him, something lonesome and subdued, like he’s been on his own for a long time. He almost seems like a bounty hunter, except her wrists aren’t shackled anymore. Any bounty hunter worth their salt knows the reward for bringing in Fennec Shand.

She turns her head back to the ceiling and begins trying to sit up. The man starts, reaching out a hand.

“Oh, I wouldn’t –”

Fennec growls at him, too proud – and too much in pain – to say that she can’t stand lying here before him. It makes her feel vulnerable. The man begrudgingly retracts his hand and just watches as she grits her teeth and forces herself upright. She takes a moment to catch her breath, then glowers at him when she’s good and ready to get back into it.

“What do you want from me?”

“Your help,” the man says, folding his hands in his lap. “I’m on the hunt for a Mandalorian. Sound familiar?”

Fennec rolls her eyes.

“I came across one recently, yes.”

“Good,” the man says.

Fennec looks down at her stomach for the first time, the strip of cloth there partially cut out. She lifts it to find cybernetics where once there was flesh, all encased in a sheet of clear plastic. It’s strange, but not grotesque in the way that she always thought cybernetic implants would be grotesque; more curious-looking than anything else.

“Huh,” says Fennec quietly.

“I’m sorry that it’s all so… exposed,” the man says, and he sounds like he means it. “I didn’t have synthetic flesh on hand, so I had to make do.”

“Thank you,” Fennec says, and she means it, too. “But… why would you save me?”

“I know a thing or two about being left for dead in the desert,” he says, his tone dark. “And I figured it’d be nice to have one of the best assassins in the galaxy on my side.”

“So, how do you know I’m going to be on your side?”

“You’re a mercenary, not lawless,” the man says. “I know you live by a code. I saved your life. You’re in my debt now.”

Fennec stares at him. Dank farrik, he’s right – she doesn’t like it, but he’s right. Fennec Shand always repays her debts, and this is a big one. She owes him her very life. He could ask her to do almost anything, and all he wants is to find a Mandalorian? She can do that.

“Okay,” Fennec says, after a moment of contemplation. She’s secretly pleased to have been given an opportunity for round two with the Mandalorian. He won’t get her so easily the next time they meet. “Whoever you are, and whatever you want with the Mandalorian, I’ll help you.”

 _As though I had a choice,_ she thinks.

“I’m Boba Fett,” says the man, standing up. “And I’m going to get back what belongs to me.”

Their base is a little encampment nestled on the edge of the Dune Sea. Fennec still can’t go anywhere too populated, what with the large bounty on her head, and Boba seems to prefer the isolation, so it all works out. He lets her stay in the tent while she recuperates and instead sleeps in his ship, a big, beat-up thing that looks like it’s been through as much as him.

After such a long time hiding out alone, Fennec isn’t used to having someone else around. It’s made a bit easier by the fact that Boba keeps to himself most of the time, only ever coming to her to give her the rations he keeps stockpiled on his ship, or to give her some bacta whenever her back is acting up. It’s only a few days before Fennec starts to get antsy.

“No,” says Boba when she tries to convince him to pack up camp. “The Mandalorian leaves a trail. He’s good at covering it up, but I’ve picked up on a few things. He’ll be back, eventually. Something always brings him back to Tatooine. Besides,” he adds sternly, crossing his arms. “You still need to heal before we can do anything.”

“Oh, _come on,”_ Fennec groans, standing up from the cot and cracking her neck. “I could hit a womp rat from twenty yards away with one arm, and you know it. I’m going out of my mind here. Let me go shoot something.”

Boba regards her, looking mostly exasperated – but also, something else. Amused, maybe. It’s a tiny thing that gives him away, just a small dip in the corner of his mouth that smoothens out his frown, but Fennec notices.

“Fine,” he says finally. “Let’s go shoot something.”

They drive out deeper into the desert, where Boba is sure nobody will find them, and he watches her shoot womp rats. It feels good to hold a rifle in her hands again. From the moment she’d picked up a blaster for the first time in her youth, fresh-faced and desperate for a job, Fennec had known this was what she was meant to do.

At first, when she gets down to the ground and hoists her rifle up, she finds out that she has to re-learn how to breathe. There’s machinery holding her stomach together now, and every breath feels different – just the slightest bit, but enough for her to notice. It makes her grip feel off when she aims down her sights for the first time. It’s close to being right, but it’s not right. Fennec won’t settle for anything less. Anything less is what gets her killed.

It takes some time and a lot of cursing under her breath, but eventually Fennec finds her groove again. Afterwards, when she’s sweaty and content and all out of womp rats to shoot, she stands up and sees Boba still standing there, looking at her with a small smile on his face. She didn’t even know he was capable of smiling.

“You’re good at that,” he says.

“Hm,” is all Fennec offers in response, because she doesn’t need to be told what she already knows. Still, she finds herself feeling oddly pleased as she brushes past him to get back to the speeder.

Boba is right. The Mandalorian comes back to Tatooine.

They trek out to a little town in the middle of nowhere called Mos Pelgo and peer at it from a distance. Fennec watches in awe as a krayt dragon slithers through town, making every building shudder, and devours a bantha before retreating back into the sand. She’s never seen a krayt dragon before. She turns to comment on it and instead sees Boba staring intently down his binoculars, laser focused on where the Mandalorian is standing and talking to someone. His mouth is set in a hard line. Fennec decides not to say anything for the moment.

She’s still thinking about it later on, though, when they’ve set up their campfire and are quietly eating around it. Just over the sand dunes, the Mandalorian is sitting with the sheriff of Mos Pelgo and a group of Tuskens.

“Why do you hate the Mandalorian?” Fennec asks faux-casually, picking at the dried meat in her portion.

“Huh?” says Boba, looking up from his food. Fennec huffs.

“I saw how you were looking at him earlier,” she says. “Like you wanted to shoot him right then and there.”

“What?” Boba says, and he sounds genuinely surprised. “No, I don’t want to kill the Mandalorian. It’s…”

He stops, eyes drifting away from her. Fennec says nothing, waits patiently for him to keep going. Normally, when he goes silent like this, she’ll shrug and brush it off. Boba isn’t a man of many words. It usually suits her fine, since she’s not much for talking, either. But they’ve been together for weeks now, and today, seeing the Mandalorian – that’s the most emotion she’s ever seen him exhibit. Fennec is bored, and restless, and more than a little curious about her mysterious companion. So she waits.

Eventually Boba clears his throat and looks back at her.

“I was looking at the man he was talking to,” he says. “The sheriff. The armor he was wearing – that’s what I’m after.”

Fennec frowns.

“Why do you need the Mandalorian for that?”

“Because it’s Mandalorian armor,” Boba says simply. “I couldn’t go sniffing around for it. Would attract too much attention. When I heard of the Mandalorian bounty hunter, though, I knew he’d come looking for it. And he did. And now he’s led me right to it.”

Fennec hums quietly in understanding. She’s ready to let the subject go, but Boba takes a breath and says one more thing.

“It was my father’s, once.”

Fennec looks up at him. He averts his gaze. They don’t speak for the rest of the night, but Fennec can feel it – some sort of barrier between them is gone. She knows that this is a slippery slope. She doesn’t want there to be anything more than obligation keeping her at his side, but, despite her best efforts, there’s something she rather likes about being with Boba Fett. She chalks it up to having been alone for too long.

After the shootout on Tython is over and Fennec is left looking helplessly to the sky, she turns to the Mandalorian. He’s looking up at the sky, too. She tries to say something but the words get stuck in her throat. All the quiet resentment she’s been harboring towards him this whole time just fades away, utterly meaningless in the face of this – the muted despair of a man who’s lost his child.

As Fennec watches the Mandalorian pick at the pitiful remains of his ship, it occurs to her that he might be the saddest person she’s ever seen. He wears his loneliness so openly. It’s the weariness in his shoulders, the timbre of his voice, the way he trudges about instead of walking. Fennec has the eye of a marksman; she can spot a weakness in an instant. If not for the helmet, she thinks, the Mandalorian would never be able to hide any of his sadness at all.

They make their way back to Boba’s ship after the Mandalorian has salvaged what he can, none of them in the mood for talking. When they’re nearly there, Boba clears his throat and Fennec turns to look at him.

“What’s on your mind?” he asks, quietly and a little stiffly. It’s the first time he’s ever asked her something like that. Fennec stares back at him, stunned for a second. Then she smiles ruefully.

“The armor,” she says. “It suits you.”

Boba exhales quietly, sounding relieved.

“I know,” he says, his voice faraway, but still, more at peace than she’s ever heard it. Like something that was missing a long time has finally clicked back into place.


End file.
